 Lowes, they say, make the man. But consider our friend in the tin topcoat. As recently as 500 years ago, he hot-rodded around on a big black charger. Rescuing damsels and clobbering dragons and telling such big fibs about it, we still think of knights as giants. They weren't. Even the average man today is taller, stronger, and healthier. One big reason why is because we eat better. We can get our three square meals a day the year around. We eat well because we grow better food. Because we can transport and handle food at high speed. But most important of all, we have learned to keep food. Preservation of food has been a problem for man from the very beginning. Even if food was abundant, he couldn't keep it for the lean days. Eventually, man learned to sun dry food, to smoke it, to salt it, which made salt so important it was an early form of money. It's ironical that yesterday's staples are often today's delicacies. But because few foods could be preserved and primitive methods caused important vitamins to be lost, no one ever had a balanced diet three squares a day the year round. If food was plentiful, they ate. If not, if the fruits or vegetables were out of season or the hunting bad, they did without. Bread was the staff of life, sometimes appetizer, entree, and dessert, nourishing in its way, but hardly a square meal. An early attempt at food preservation was the use of spices, rosemary, nutmeg, cinnamon, and many others. It was the search for the short spice route which led Columbus to America. But imagine the sailors' diet after a few weeks at sea. Fresh fruits and vegetables gone, the bacon moldy, the flour, well, inhabited. Food was a problem for all who traveled. Armies often spent more time foraging than fighting. The French government offered a prize of 12,000 francs for a safe method of preserving food, and it was won during Napoleon's reign and appropriately by a French chef. His name was Nicholas Appare, the date, 189, less than 150 years ago. Monsieur Appare's great discovery was that food tightly sealed in a container, then thoroughly heated, would keep for years. Napoleon got the statues, while Appare, having spent all his money perfecting his canning methods, died a poor man. But Appare's monument is infinitely greater. His discovery helped all mankind to eat right, to get their three squares a day the year around. But the canning process had a long way to go before canneries could turn out food at this rate. The next big advance was the tin can, the brainchild of an Englishman named Peter Durand. In 1820, canning reached America when a man named William Underwood set up a cannery in Boston. But everything was done by hand, and this made canned food scarce, a luxury. Can making was particularly slow at first. But inventions succeeded invention, and before too long machines were doing more in an hour than a man might do in a week, a month. One of the most important inventions came in 1874, when A.K. Shriver perfected the pressure cooker for canneries, the retort. The high pressures of the retort reduced the cooking period for most foods from hours to minutes. With the retort so efficient, many more new inventions were needed to handle food faster. As the canning process speeded up, the price of canned foods went down. The quality improved, and scenes like this have become much less common than in Grandmother's day. Strangely enough, the first can opener wasn't patented until 1858, almost 50 years after the invention of the can. The inventor was Ezra J. Warner, since then probably nothing as so intrigued gadget-minded Americans as the canner. Hand type openers and wall openers. And for glass containers, the lid flipper. The spoon works too. It's a good thing Warner dreamed up the can opener, however, for Americans alone open more than 100 million containers a day, 100 million containers every 24 hours, more than 500 items. How is it possible to grow, and to distribute such an incredible amount? Machines of course help make it possible. Every cannery contains dozens of intricate, specially designed machines. But the real backbone of the canning industry is the more than 500,000 people involved. A half million people. Who are they? They're the cannery workers with their busy, wonderfully skilled hands. Hands that clean, hands that trim, hands that sort, that inspect, that pack. There are the farmers and the ranchers, the men who harvest. There are the fishermen leading their hard and dangerous lives so that we may have choice sea foods the year round. Peas and other crops are checked to determine the proper moment for harvesting. When that moment arrives, the canner's field men quickly notify the cannery, often by radio. Then the men and the machines move in. They work with speed and efficiency. One reason canned foods taste so good. Within three hours or less, these peas are in the cannery ready to be processed. Together with minor variations for different foods is what happens. When the product arrives, it's husked or peeled if necessary, sorted as to size and ripeness and carefully inspected. It undergoes frequent washings. Some foods are chopped or sliced, then blanched or briefly heated in giant kettles. All foods are inspected carefully at each stage of processing. Complicated machines do a remarkably precise job of filling the containers with food, liquid and seasoning in just the right amounts. The container then travels into an exhaust box where hot steam replaces the air, then to sealing machines, and on to the retorts or pressure kettles. Even as with Monsieur Repaire, the heating time and temperature are still the most important factors. Some foods need but a few minutes of boiling temperature, while others may take more than two hours under steam pressure. Rapid cooling completes the process. Examples of each day's production are checked and tested by trained specialists. Quality of product is essential. Some containers are labeled before warehousing, others when they're shipped out. Either way, the label is important because it helps to tell the shopper what is inside. The shopper wouldn't find canned food as good or as bad if it were not for the scientists who are constantly improving our fruits and vegetables. The development of sweeter, juicier peas, for example. By combining the good qualities of one strain with those of another, tomatoes have been developed with more flavor, fewer seeds and better color. The sweet corn of today has little resemblance to corn of a hundred years ago. And it was all done, you might say, with paper bags. Cross-pollinization selective breeding has worked many wonders. Only a fruit or vegetable exists that has not been redesigned. Improved in taste, in size, in appearance, in quality, in resistance to drought and disease. Today more than ever, the process of improvement goes on. Farmers learn better farming methods through the help of county agents, state agricultural colleges, the federal government and canner's fieldmen. New and better fertilizers and crop rotation result in greater yields. Special chemicals are sprayed or dusted on the growing crops to protect them against pests and disease. The results are better quality foods and more often. Manufacturers buy with one another to bring out more efficient machines. Container manufacturers have research teams constantly at work, tailoring the can to the product it holds. The glass container of today is many times stronger and lighter than our grandmother's had available. The canners themselves have developed new products to meet special needs. Baby foods are one of the best friends a mother and the baby ever had. Much of what this baby eats is found in jars and cans, or some babies even the milk. Because of canning, this little fellow and millions like him is assured of his three squares right from the beginning. Canning has come a long way in 150 years and so has mankind. If man has grown so much bigger and healthier in such a short time, what effect will a constant supply of good food have on succeeding generations? Someday people will go to museums and look at quaint old jet pilot suits and they'll talk about the heroes who are them. And perhaps they'll say, somehow I thought they were bigger than them. You never can tell. Three square meals a day is still pretty new in human experience.